Pre-service teachers' engineering design practices in an integrated engineering and literacy experience

Abstract

The National Research Council's recent Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2012) and the Next Generation Science Standards (Achieve, Inc., 2013) bring new urgency and importance to the task of exposing K-12 students to the practices and big ideas of engineering. At the elementary school level, this task requires not only the adjustment of curriculum and pedagogy, but also a transformation in the preparation of new elementary teachers. The teacher education community is limited in its understanding of how novice teachers of elementary students learn to teach engineering. Research is needed to inform a new model for preparing preservice elementary teachers to teach engineering. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2013.